nd of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not
imagine--as if, between gentlemen--"

At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face
of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it.
Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled
questions.

Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and
self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at
her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the
imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And
then the word _hasheesh_.

Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been
smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey,
unless silenced, had threatened betrayal.

The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the
horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was
ruin....

Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his
danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and
his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror.

Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He
hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get
a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood.

And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's
daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of
that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment,
but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to
find some vulnerable hold.

He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed
business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come
with his proofs....

"So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious
business this is. And how any talk of--of unreadiness--if you were
not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon
you--might serve to anger him.... And so--"

Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The
color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain,
with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot,
protective compassion that tore at her pride....

She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words
that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat.

She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity,
of understanding, of promise, she achieved